Category Archives: Science/Engineering

UPDATED at bottom. Feds quietly overturn 40 years of bad advice.

I’ve had several family doctors over the years and most of them insisted that cholesterol, the so-called good and bad parts of it, was something to be concerned about—even to the extent of making dietary changes, etc. And then, way back in the early 1980s, I chanced upon a family physician who showed me my latest rather unfortunate cholesterol results and smiled and shrugged.

He said he didn’t think they were very much to worry about. He said he thought cholesterol as a health concern was over-rated. Unfortunately, he soon died (not of cholesterol-caused heart disease but of AIDS) and I wound up discovering how unusual he had been. Because I wound up with another doctor who was hell-bent on the subject. He was especially astounded to hear that I had started doing the Atkins diet on my own hook and was eating fatty meats and eggs every day. Like my grandparents who lived into their 90s.

Fatty meat and eggs, yowza! So he began badgering me about starting a course of statins, prescription drugs to lower my still rather bad cholesterol readings. I have always resisted prescription drugs and, remembering my old doc I resisted the statins and kept resisting them until me and the new guy got tired of arguing and parted. I found another doc who didn’t push statins and, by then, Atkins and other low-carb diets were becoming more or less respectable and the idea of eating fatty meat and eggs every day was much less objectionable.

I don’t know if the old statin-pusher has changed his tune or if he’s seen this new info, though you’ll have to read most of it to get the gist. They buried the lede for some reason.  Heh.  “In short. Cholesterol is healthy, saturated fat is healthy, salt is healthy and sugar is unhealthy”. Turns out there never was any hard evidence that cholesterol was even worrisome. Imagine that. It was on par with the federal government’s long-time insistence that low-fat diets were necessary, even if the increased sugar in low-fat diets could kill you. The latter is now blamed for our outbreaks of obesity and diabetes.

Admittedly, it’s hard to decide who to believe any more about anything. We’re lucky to have the Internet and its multiplicity of sources to compare and contrast. All I had before 1995 and the advent of the Web was my own stubbornness. It’s still a matter of homework and guesswork, however, especially if you tend, as I always have tended, to question authority. Which is a main reason I also discount claims of global warming/climate change, which you might call the new cholesterol. Although I must admit having Al Bore, Our Little Barry Hussein and the Dictator’s Club (aka the United Nations) all in the same GW/CC corner are excellent reasons to disbelieve in themselves.

Via Barrel Strength & American Digest

UPDATE: From the WaPo: “The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.”

That was in February. The move later turned up buried on page 91 of a 572-page federal dietary report. As of July, most of the snooze media, which seldom reads past the executive summary, still hasn’t caught on. When the feds overturn 40 years of bad advice they do it on tippy-toe. And they wonder why people don’t trust them.